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The theme this week appears to have been performance reviews, which threw me at first. We’re interns, so we won’t really be having performance reviews. Not in the sense that raises or promotions hang in the balance. But the more I read and the more I thought about it, I realized the readings could be quite helpful .
Yes, most of us aren’t at career jobs. We might have had reviews in the past, but likely they were a quick review to tell you that you needed to promote more of the company credit card to customers. In our current internships, we’ll be getting performance reviews in about a month. It may not seem important, but everyone can use these reviews as practice for performance reviews for later jobs.
At first, the Messmer reading seemed a little irrelevant. As I continued to read, though, I understood that these techniques may not be ones I personally use with people (until I am the CEO of Lantz Publishing, of course) it is helpful to be prepared for any type of review. Different employers will use different techniques, and you won’t know until it happens, but it could be incredibly helpful to know what to watch out for.
“Preparing for Your Performance Review” was the second most helpful reading, I think. It was helpful to see how I should respond to a variety of situations in the actual review. It also allowed me to consider how I should prepare for my review this semester and reviews in the future. I rarely feel like there’s someone there, holding your hand and telling you what exactly you need to do, so readings such as this one helps entry-level workers such as ourselves get a sense of what work life is like after college.
Performance reviews are important in all aspects of work. It helps you to know what your doing right and more importantly what you’re doing wrong. While our internship reviews may not seem that bad they are still very important. Knowing how to get the best performance review is helps in ensuring we do the best possible work for our internships and secure our grades.
Like Celeste I felt that the Messmer reading was a bit strange. After reading it I realized how helpful it could be. It provided a good understanding of the types of reviews that we could be facing. It helps to prepare us for what could be coming once we are in the “real world”. My current position at a privately owned company I don’t have the threat of performance reviews. If they don’t like what I’m doing they are more likely to tell me than to evaluate me.
Zimmerman’s article on annual reviews shows that these reviews can be just as important as the performance reviews we face though out the year. The annual review could provide you with a raise or a promotion depending on your work throughout the year. Performance reviews can help you to achieve a better understanding of what your superiors will be expecting when your yearly review comes up. These reviews can be nerve racking especially if you are planning to ask for something from your superior’s such as a raise. You want to wait for the most opportune time in which to do this. The best time to ask is when you are being praised for your performance over the year especially if you have excelled. This should not come as a shock to them because the topic would have been brought up in previous meetings, your performance reviews.
I think that all of these things are important for us to think about right now. While we may not be facing annual reviews in our internships it is important that we keep these things in mind. When we graduate we will all be finding jobs in our fields, these jobs will have these reviews and they will determine how far we advance in the company as well as the tasks we will be trusted with in our future. Knowing what we will be up against will help us to do the best we can on our reviews and ensure that we are able to do the things we need to do.Performance reviews. Not a happy thought but a necessary one. As much as we don’t like looking forward to them, I believe this week’s readings do an excellent job at pointing out why we should be looking forward to them and using them to our benefit. A pay raise is always a nice motivator. But if you also want to secure and stress your importance to company, this would be the opportune time to do it. The readings kept saying how perfect an opportunity it is to display your capabilities and how much more you can do for the company.
I found the Zimmerman article especially helpful. It provides ton of good advice as to where you should start preparing for your performance review. It even gave some advice on what to do if you all you hear is criticism at your performance review. Taking criticism is the hardest part for me whenever under review. After I’ve digested it, I’m usually more understanding about it and agree but it’s usually the surprise that gets me. The article also tells you how to make sure there are no surprises at your performance review. This requires some keeping track of your work and projects. Something I’m not especially good at, but the benefits of doing so outweigh the thought of maybe facing a few surprises at review time.
The Messmer article was also helpful in detailing what kind of performance reviews we could possibly be facing one day. Knowing what to expect is always nice. Honestly, I would probably prefer the 360-degree review over the others. I would feel more comfortable knowing that I get reviewed on a larger scope of my peers, colleagues, and coworkers than just the narrowed scope of my manager/supervisor.I think performance reviwes are more necessary for out internships than we think. Certainly they are more important than I think Celeste implied in her post. It’s true that most of us are not interning for our dream job, but they all atleast relate to the field we want to go into. These internships get your foot in the door and help us establish professional contacts. The better we do in these internships, not only the better grade we will get in this class, but the more likely we will be able to use this experience as a key part of our future resumes. Even in a smaller scale, this semester’s internship might just lead to a summer job or a referral to another office or organization for a similar or better job. Even now, as we are students, we are beginning to climb the corporate ladder. These performance reviews discussed in this week’s readings are essential now and for the rest of our working lives.
I like the idea from the Zimmerman article about first evaluating yourself. I believe that the best employees are always their own biggest critics. If you’re being honest with yourself, in a normal situation, you shouldn’t be surprised by whatever review you get from your boss. I think the information in this article was really helpful. It gave some good advice on how to interact with your boss and how to react to feedback.
I thought the Katz artile was interesting in the case of “Darlene.” Yes, she had the right background for the job, but I like that what set her apart from the others (and why she got promoted ahead of schedule) was her expertise as a writer. I feel like writing is an essential skill that people often overlook. People look down on English majors because (supposedly) everyone can read and write, so why study it? Well, the truth is, that not everyone can. Writers are essential to the work force, and it is a very valuable skill to have. I like that Katz took the time to actually conduct a study regarding this.
The Varhol article was similar to the Zimmerman one in the respect that you really have to evaluate yourself. From what I understand, the performance review is more of an experience that you are a part of, not just some unfortunate event that happens to you. The Messmer article went along with this same concept. The performance review is really more like your resume all over again. You make a list of your personal and professional accomplishments within the company, and then basically remind your boss of them.
Naturally a review on any type of personal performance is nerve-wracking, and performance reviews in the workplace are especially so. Even though ours will not be as serious because we are just semester-long interns, they are still important and we can use them to our benefit. Being that interns are at the bottom on the pyramid, our superiors will be watching us closely, even if we think they may not be. For example, my supervisor reminded me casually the other day that my midterm review would be coming up, and that I need to pay attention and take a more active approach on our twitter account. No big deal. I was a little distraught at first, but I’m glad she mentioned it to me before the actual review so that I can get to work on correcting the problem, which is one of the main points our readings stressed.
The type of review that struck me the most was the 360 review. I had never heard of this before but it makes sense that our superiors might ask our co-workers what they think about us. This is why it is important to maintain positive relationships with the people we work with. However, we must keep in mind that working well with others isn’t the only way to maintain positive relationships. While we need to keep a level of privacy and confidentiality in the workplace, it may be good to get to know each other on a slightly more personal level so that we can be in-tune with one another’s thoughts and feelings regarding projects and other topics.
I don’t think anyone has mentioned the article about power yet. I think we can all learn a lot from Darlene. She started out on the bottom but through demonstration of her hard work and expertise to her superiors she was able to propel herself and her career forward and even create a new position for herself. Who wouldn’t want to have a job where they could define their own responsibilities and requirements (at least to a point). Another good thing that we can learn from Darlene is to be sure to take into consideration the audiences for our documents and the level of expertise these people will have. While this has been bashed into our heads as English majors, it is often easy to over-inflate or “fluff” your documents with too much technical jargon that others who do not have your expertise can’t understand.
All-in-all these readings have really calmed me down. They made me realize that things can go well when you are prepared. As my dad always says ” Poor, pitiful preparation leads to poor, pitiful performance.”
Yes, getting a review of any sort can be intimidating and nerve-wracking, whether it’s academic or work related, and you suddenly start second guessing everything you have done up to that point. And while, as Celeste mentioned, promotions and pay raises aren’t going to factor into the equation for our performance reviews, I still think they will prove beneficial for all of us. Performance reviews in the less stressful situations we are in now can help prepare us for the real thing later on down the road. Also, I think it is important to remember that even though we look at these as semester-long internships, how our supervisors see us now can help us with employment in the future. The Alumni Center where I am interning has actually offered previous interns full time employment. That’s definitely something to keep in mind this semester.
The 360 review wasn’t something I had really ever considered before, but now it seems like one of the best performance reviews that could be conducted in a work place. People tend to alter their attitudes around supervisors and authority figures, so getting reviews from co-workers would wipe out any false professionalism. It is important to be professional, but open and approachable at the same time.
These articles really stressed the importance of hard work and preparedness. I always find myself hearing, “It’s who you know, not what you know” when it comes to employment and moving up in the workplace. But really, as these articles demonstrated, if you are responsible, hard working, and conduct yourself well, things can work in your favor.
I believe that like Liz said performance reviews are important. As interns, we need to know what we are doing right and wrong. It is helpful when we have someone to tell us this. I do fear the performance review that is coming up, but I am also looking forward to it. I want to know how I can better myself. I also want to know what I am good at. The thing I fear most for the performance review is that I am not getting things done in a timely manner. I am currently writing the first newsletter for the Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. So for the first issue, the newsletter is going to be introducing each of the staff members. It is hard to be able to speak with all of the staff, because they are so busy. I have had to change dates to speak with one of the staff members, because she has had several meetings that run over. I would like to think that I am putting in the most effort that I can, but it seems hard to do when everybody else is so busy.
unless i missed something as my laptop jumps the scroll down, it seems no one has drawn the parallel between performance reviews and grades, especially with internships. basically the same thing, only reviews are for money and power. just like with grades, you should have an idea of what you’re going to get based on your ability to complete work and how well you do so. being surprised by an unfavorable performance review demonstrates either your lack of awareness or your supervisor’s lack of communication of expectations. as at least two of the articles pointed out, keeping track of your work is essential and the katz (? the newcomer) article is a great example of how important communication is. while the emphasis of the katz study seemed to be on the woman’s confidence and motivation, the underlying element was her communication. if you’re doing good work, checking in with your supervisor to make sure you’re on track, and being honest with yourself, a bad performance review won’t surprise you because you won’t get one. the messmer article was just a pain to read because of the hodgepodge first page, but the basic descriptions of typical review types helps take the mystery out of what to expect. some companies really don’t care what supervisors think but focus on such statistics as production numbers. other companies/offices give so much room to the supervisors (and this can go all the way up to ceo’s) that personality is the biggest part. being actively prepared for a performance review is pretty much the big kid version of a conference with a professor at mid-term or finishing up a course, only instead of discussing how to improve a grade or what course to take next, the review may cover whether a promotion, raise or termination are in the offing.
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mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}I think performance reviews are incredibly important. As interns, any kind of feedback from employers is important. However, not all internships do have performance reviews. Since we’re doing this for a class, our supervisors had to agree to evaluate us at certain times, so we should be thankful we get the opportunity to know how we’re doing. For my internship, sometimes the boss got a little too busy on a daily basis to give me feedback on every project. There were a few reports I wrote for her that I never ended up hearing back about, but that’s to be expected. My boss once said to me that even though they try to do their best to make sure interns learn as much as they can, a big reason the company hires interns is to help the assistant better manage her workload. As a result, sometimes feedback on projects falls to the wayside. So, these performance reviews (or our midterm assessment) are fantastic, especially if it’s been a busy couple of months in the office.
As it was mentioned it in an earlier post, these reviews are important for another reason, too—they factor into our grades for the class. Even if the internships aren’t at our dream companies, we still have to do a good job because our evaluations count for more than just one thing.I have always viewed performance reviews as an intimidating and negative experience. However, after going through this weeks discussion readings, I feel I have a deeper understanding of reviews. The Messner article clarified the reasons for and benefits of performance reviews. It also described how employers also face difficulties related to reviews, which was kind of comforting. In addition, I appreciated the fact that Messner described the different performance review structures. Now, I feel like I can prepare for reviews to prevent being surprised or stumped by on-the-spot questions. I also never considered requesting that a performance review happen on neutral ground, rather than a supervisor’s office.
The Zimmerman and Varhol articles were also very helpful. They both offered many useful tips for performance review preparation. Both suggest self-reflection before the review to avoid being surprised by feedback you should have expected. Varhol also suggests writing down summaries of your achievements, both for your supervisor and yourself. This way, you can further emphasize your preparedness and value to your boss, while making sure you can respond to questions in an organized manner. Overall, both of these articles helped me become more comfortable with the idea of a performance review, as well as more confident in my ability to prepare for one.
Finally, even though I was initially unsure of the significance of the Katz article, I found it very interesting and enlightening. Darlene’s story was inspiring and a great example of taking initiative at work. I also liked that Katz illustrated just how important writing is to organizations in regards to credibility, efficiency, and productivity. The article also made me aware that I need to market and utilize my natural talents, even if they aren’t asked for in the job listing.
I agree with Liz that performance reviews are definitely important and not something that should ever be taken lightly. There’s no telling what kind of affects these can reviews will have on our careers later on down the road. It could lead to a job. If not, these are still important for our grades as someone else pointed out. Obviously if your performance review goes poorly, your grade is going to reflect that as well. Now is probably one of the best times of the semester to be working hard. You should be working hard all semester long, but if you feel like it’s necessary to work just a little harder before your performance review it’s probably not a bad idea.
Also, as we can all expect some kind of performance review in our jobs after college, we can certainly use this performance review now as practice for those later on.
I share everyone’s fear of performance reviews. It is something that not only affects us but our family members as well. Recently my mom had a performance review and I remember asking her how she was so calm and wasn’t nervous. She looked at me and shrugged stating that what would happen would happen and there was nothing she could do to make it any different now. It’s important to go into these things with your head held high and a positive attitude. This attitude allows the higher ups to have faith in you to trust you. It’s important for them to know this because they will be more likely to give you a better review. You may even gain a raise depending on the work you have done and the attitude you carry with you. Unfortunately there is always the chance to face a negative review. The best thing to do in this situation is to figure out what you are doing wrong and then how to fix it. Without progress there will be no success.
I like that one of the readings comes from the employer’s perspective. By considering the review from all perspectives, we can better prepare for reviews, as well as just improving our working habits in general.
The New York Times article suggests doing self-review before you will be reviewed in order to predict what your strengths and faults will be. In reality, we need to be constantly self-reviewing in order to really improve ourselves professionally. But since no one is ever that self-aware and still sane, by periodically reconsidering our strengths and weaknesses, we can improve ourselves and prepare to be reviewed.
Specifics are also very important. By making specific goals and noting specific aspects of personal performance, the review will be much more effective. As we’ve learned in all our previous PWE classes, knowing your audience is key. What do they know? What do they need to know? That’s why the Messmer reading is so important. It is from the employer’s perspective. What are the benefits for the employer? They have a lot to gain, or to lose, from your review. Consider what they will need to know about you?
Treat yourself as your e mployer would treat you.
Self-awareness should be valued inside and outside of the work place. But, I definitely agree that it is unhealthy to be critiquing and reflecting upon yourself one-hundred percent of the time. The articles by Zimmerman and Varhol insist self-review before meeting with a supervisor for a formal performance review. To me, that is a very appropriate time to reflect, as I would absolutely hate to be unprepared for a meeting when the topic is my work.
The Center for Literary Computing is a pretty small operation, and I highly doubt that my mid-semester review will require Dr. Baldwin to ask me many questions. However,knowing the different forms that performance reviews could take on may benefit me as I enter the workplace as a graduate.
One of the articles suggested making a list of your accomplishments before the review. This may help make the argument that you’re doing well. I see this as a very helpful suggestion because I know that I rarely talk myself up or mention my strengths. There is a difference between modesty and self-representation, and I imagine that I will need to be more forthcoming about my accomplishments at work when I actually have to partake in a formal performance review.
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